Donald Clark Plan B

What is Plan B? Not Plan A!

Monday, August 29, 2016

20 ways to make your e-learning totally suck

A lot of e-learning sucks. It’s like wearing a suit or coat
that’s two sizes too small – all a bit cramped and makes you feel
uncomfortable. The problem is design that ignores the research, ignores learning theory and above all, ignores the fact that many of us hate much of the over-designed stuff that passes for contemporary e-learning. Here’s a selection of 20 things that drive me CRAZY when doing
e-learning....

4. Perfect people – I know this is about management but I don’t need stock pictures of perfect people in perfect suits with perfect teeth
and hair – believe me, real offices don’t look like that.

5. Text-graphic, text-graphic – Lord Privy Seal – picture of
Lord, Picture of toilet, picture of seal. Stop just selecting a lazy image for
every noun in the text, page by page. More here.

6. Too much text – I don’t want all of this legal stuff, detail, overlong stories. I’m never going to remember all of this, so cut it until it bleeds, then cut it some more.7. Text and audio at same time – stop – I can’t do both at
the same time. Give me images with narration or text only – not narration and
text at the same time – it makes my head hurt.

8. Over-engineered effects – too much distracting movement, effects and
buzz makes my head spin – listen up - when I learn, less is more.

9. Long video sequences – OK you’ve hired a video guy and
the academic wants to prattle on a bit but I’m bored after 5 minutes and
learning precisely nothing. Keep it short. Less is more. More here.

10. Tinny audio – you sound as though you’ve recorded this
in a tin shed. Get a proper mike and record in a proper environment.

11. Sound effects – you may think it’s fun but those beeps
for correct answers and bongs for wrong answers are doing my head in! More here.

12. Music – who told
you that background music aids learning – it doesn’t - get rid of it. More here.

13. Multiple choice questions that simply take a noun from
the text and ask me to select it from a list. In real life I never select
answers from lists. It’s a test of recognition, not knowing. More here.

14. Stupid options in multiple-choice questions – don’t do
it, I’m not a dumb-ass, treat me like an adult.

15. False buttons – don’t make me click on something that
looks like it’s interactive when it’s not. That annoys the hell out of me. More here.

16. Opaque icons – your graphic artist may think he/she is
an ‘artist’ but I haven’t a clue what that icon means.

17. Gamification – I’m not one of Pavlov’s dogs, so don’t
make me collect coins, chase rubies or do silly gamey things in order to learn
– I’m not 12. (Note that I'm all for deep gamification.) More DOs and DON'Ts here.

18. Learning styles – what are you talking about - they
don’t exist. Let me repeat – they don’t exist.

19. Mindful – let’s stop and be mindful – no that’s a
mindless fad and I have a mind that wants to learn– move on.

20. Chat – so you’ve got a chat box for ‘social’ learning,
as you believe in social constructivism. Forget that Vygotsky shit – chat is
usually boring, long winded and irrelevant.Conclusion

Note that I'm not against all of these things, especially gamification and collaboration. I'm just against simplisitc implementations that learners don't like. I could have gone on with another 400 DOs and
DON’Ts but they’re all listed, explained and categorised here, if you want to check out more.

Saturday, August 27, 2016

7 weird ways the porn industry leads in VR (and what we can learn from it)

Sex was not invented in the sixties and it is likely that our
prehistoric ancestors were pretty turned on to the use of sex-tech, which has
been dated back to at least 26000 years. The dildo predates agriculture, and
there’s enough examples of usable phalluses to state that this was a common object in prehistoric culture. A case has also been made
for the ‘venus’ figures, especially those with exaggerated sexual features, as being
a form of early pornography.

The porn industry has always been quick to grab the opportunities that
innovations in technology offered. In painting, print, photography, film,
videotapes, telephone, television, the web, streaming video, webcams
and now VR. In marketing and commerce, they pioneered progression from free to
paid services, from video to live, pop ups, local offers and personalised
recommendations.

Sex and VRSex, like most forms of human activity, is a 3D affair. It involves
the intimacy and physicality of the 3D human form. Virtual sex gains a lot from ‘presence’ in VR – the actual feeling that you are there
with someone else. It’s one thing to
watch, quite another to feel as though you are actually there, with that
person, or actually having sex with that person. VR is not watching sex it’s
having sex.

It is a natural for VR. Pornography is the creation of fantasy sex. Those fantasies can now be very
real. If you want an idea of the effect of early content on people experiencing
VR sex for the first time, watch this.

1. Content – human presence

VR content is a mainstream category in many porn sites. They
have been experimenting and quick to innovate with VR, long before any consumer VR hardware was
available. One thing they quickly learned was that the full 360 degree was
unnecessary. Interesting things in sex tend to happen in one direction - that's alesson many 360 and VR folk need to learn. As most sex is in one direction, so they limited the fixed field of
view to 180 degrees or less. At this level, you are still the voyeur but the
sense of presence is increased and you have the ability to look around. What
some have reported, who have used Naughty America’s passive porn in VR is a sense of being
there but also an experience, not of small figures on a small screen, but sex on a
human scale. We should listen to this as it is exactly what we need to learn about
the use of VR in learning – presence, the human scale, the idea that we can
simulate human experiences in soft skills (as oposed to hard skills!) and all of those things we regard as
difficult to teach.

2. Interactive – human touch

To really participate, one needs to add the sense of touch. The haptic side is
exactly what has been offered for centuries through sex toys. This has been
supplemented with VR, so that the sex toy is accompanied by imagery of a real
or graphically created partner(s). Even before any commercial VR was available
as a consumer device, there were people working on mechanical masturbation
devices matched against the 3D vision of someone you are having sex with. Tenga
developed a masturbator that synched with a VR image back in 2014. Much of this
took place in Japan, with dolls providing the haptic stimulation. This ‘haptic’
market had been dominated by sex dolls, and by dolls we mean something way
beyond cheap plastic blow-up balloons.

This married Japanese businessman fell in love with his doll (‘she isn’t just after money and never betrays me’). These figures are now being used with VR to add the haptic dimension. The use VR
with AI programmed dolls are also being made, where you choose the personality
and your partner talks back.

A full body sex suit has also been developed that delivers touch all over
your body, with the addition of a sex toy. Synched with VR you get the sensation that someone
else is touching you. It was invented by, you guessed it, the Japanese company
Tenga. It’s actually an April Fools joke but for the full weirdness of this
potential idea, here’s the video.

The haptic dimension has obvious applications in healthcare, where one
has to investigate, apply CPR and so on. It is also applicable in the
manipulation of objects in vocational skills. We get a glimpse here of a
direction of travel as the haptic moves beyond hand controllers to full body sensations nd manipulation of 3D objects in a 3D environment..

3. Interactive live

Live performance, where the performer operates a joystick that controls
a device (sex toy) over the internet has been around since Realtouch in 2009. It can also
be synched to videos and VR experiences to deliver. There are also, wait for
it, mind controlled dildos. You think that is odd, wait for teledildonics.

4. Teledildonics – do it to
each other

Ted Nelson coined this term back in 1975 and it has been around for some time,
with physical, hands free masturbators, for men, women and couples. We used to
call on the telephone, now we Skype and Facetime, next is VR - and for some Teledildonics.

Realtouch was quite a
design piece, with movement, heating and a lubrication reservoir. A couple of
years later Lovense launched iMan and iLady, then Max and Nora, which could
work remotely over Bluetooth. LovePalz then produced Zeus and Hera for couples who
want two way control. The idea was that each device reacts to the other –
faster/slower, tighter/looser.

The new kid on the block is Kiiroo with Onyx and Pearl. Pear and Onyx
are paired devices that allow sex at a distance with your partner. Onyx is for
men with ten rings that can send and receive signals. Pearl is its female
partner device, with a vibration motor and five rings. If you’d like an idea of what sex at a distance is like watch thisVICE video, where a couple try this
for real. The woman masturbates the dildo and he, remotely experiences the
sensation in his vagina device. The guy describes it as half-way between
masturbation and real sex – in other words, it’s getting there.

5. Context and fantasy

There’s even a service in Las Vegas that allows you to experience VR in your hotel room. It provides VR porn in a room built to look like the hotel
room you’re actually in - to add realism. Porn has always been about fantasies and hyperreality has been around for
years in the popular anime porn as well as exaggerated fantasy figures. VR
means that anything is possible in terms of created fantasy worlds. There are
literally no limits to what the imagination can dream up and turn into a sexual
experience. You can literally have sex with anything, anywhere at anytime.
There's already some pretty weird stuff out there – expect more.

6. Group sex – virtual
bachannal

As multiplayer VR develops, group sex is also possible and, guess what,
it’s already here. 3DXChat avatars and in the game they meet, chat, date and have sex. You can be
anyone and operate on a fantasy level with other like-minded fantasists. This is the sort of world that Facebook envisage in social media. They know that the real social world is 3D, as opposed to the current flat world of text and 2D images. Zuckerberg bought Oculus Rift for $2.3 billion - that may be a bargain if he has bought a huge chunk of the future.

7. Sex education & therapy

Many moons ago I produced an interactive version of The Joy of Sex,
complete with Mr & Mrs game, instructional pieces and so on. It was
designed for couples and not porn, although the boundary, as the
original book showed, is not at all clear. There may well emerge some positive applications for VR in sex.

Virtual Sexology, an educational site for sex, is already up and
running.. Actually, what they say is that this is the world’s first fully
interactive lovemaking tool, a safe space for learning how to have great sex
using VR. The site has a sexologist discussing the possibility of both sex
education and therapy. This idea of coaching and instruction over a distance in real acts is interesting.

Future of virtual sex?

We have to be honest here. Sex is a powerful human instinct and its
application in satisfying basic human urges through VR will be huge. One can therefore expect
a huge amount of innovation here in the quest for realism and beyond that,
fantasy, as well as some interesting consequences, in terms of regulation. This
may well be the area that drives VR and exposes the many issues, good and bad,
that VR raises.

VR may challenge the very concept of what sex will be in the future. It
takes technology beyond the simply visual realm into the participatory and on
to levels of realism, even hyperrealism, that have never been possible before.
VR offers not flat images and video for the voyeur but being there, experiencing
sex as if it were real.

Will the virtual world be so alluring and enjoyable that the real world
pales by comparison? Will virtual sex be cathartic, excessive or damaging? What
are the political issues? Will boundaries be transgressed? Will we all experiment
more? How will it be regulated? The technology is always ahead of the sociology, so we need to start
thinking about this now. Porn will lead the way in making us face up to the
realities of virtual reality.

Conclusion

The porn industry has been quick to pick up on embryonic VR technology
and we have much to learn from how they have gone, and are going, about this.
The porn industry has always been a frontier for consumer technology. If it
works there, it will work elsewhere. Look to the effect ‘presence’ can have on
human experiences, supplemented by haptic devices and you literally get a feel
for where this is heading. Beyond this who knows? We can dismiss all of this as
an intrinsic evil or embrace the opportunities, while being careful about the
consequences and effects.

Friday, August 26, 2016

10 ways to get started with VR in learning – a primer

So here we are at the start of a VR journey that has only just begun. The first raft of consumer devices are out there – from cardboard and cheap plastic goggles that work with smartphones to headsets with external sensors, hand control devices and 3D audio. Facebook bought Oculus Rift, Samsung are in there, PSVR is in the gaming market. Vive are out there. Google have a platform. Everyone’s playing with this stuff.

I have experienced dozens and dozens of different VR
experiences. Let me tell you that all of them have blown my mind. Immersive VR repeatedly reminds me of the power of technology, not as something
we use as tools and machines, but to truly interact our minds. The
recent example of VR to rewire the brains of paraplegics so that they gain some
control over their previously inert limbs is a glimpse of a future where the
brain itself can be changed for the better by technology. That is the game we
as learning professionals are in – changing minds for the better.

If you are in the learning game, you should at least be aware of its possibilities as it delivers some unique and exciting learning opportunities. It is clear that VR delivers some marvellous benefits in
terms of attention (full-on), motivation (exciting), experience (experiential
learning), learn by doing (often ignored), context (real) and therefore
transfer and retention. But what can you do if you want to use VR to educate or train? Here’s a
quick, practical primer.

1. Immersive
photographs

The Mars Rover is a good example, where you feel as though
you are there on Mars. Geographical and geological locations that benefit from
this 360 degree view. Try these free locations, such as the Temple of Karnak in Luxor - some are astounding. This 360 view of the inside of the International Spacestation is great. One can set learning experiences around this image – ask
learners to find stuff, annotate, explain things. One can also do the inside of a building, vehicle, whatever.
Here’s one of the Supreme Court in the US.

360 degree photos have been around on Facebook for years.
You simply shoot a panorama on your smartphone, open the Facebook app and post
to share the photo. You can either turn with your finger or move the phone. To
take thinks into proper VR, with newer Samsung phones you’ll see an icon tat
says ‘View in VR’. Touch that, insert your phone into a Gear VR headset and
you’ll see it in fully immersive VR. This is a great way to get started, play with ideas or prototype.

2. Immersive moving video

You place a 360 degree camera, such as a Ricoh (£300) in the middle
of the space you want to video. This could be inside a vehicle, in a classroom,
office, gallery, hospital ward, outside location – anywhere. Press play and you
will have a full 360 world of action recorded, not in as high a definition as
the photographs shot in option 1, but usable video.

I’ve seen this used for teacher training, where an entire
lesson is captured and used to train that teacher through feedback or as
exemplary lessons for other teachers. Hundreds of short 360 degree videos
have been shot and are replayable through VR. News items from the BBC are
plentiful on YouTube. Not for profits have high impact, emotionally charged
videos on climate change, refugee issues and endangered species. In education I
can’t think of few subjects that would NOT benefit from the use of VR. Maths,
physics, chemistry, biology, drama, geography, history, languages, business,
design, art, vocational subjects and soft skills can all potentially gain from
the creation of 3D videos.

This approach is great for attitudinal training, where an
issue, incident and shift in viewpoints is needed. The fact that the learner
has no choice but to be fully attentive means you can hold them and deliver
emotional impact with the learning outcome that results in high retention. I
can remember, in details most of the VR experiences I have had that tried to
deliver this type of attitudinal shift, from being shown retreating glaciers,
rare White Rhinos, refugees landing in Greece, the guy who was going blind. There are dozens of these on YouTube. I love this one on Pluto's icy surface. This one on Mars. You can illustrate the inside of a an aircraft cockpit, even stand with David Attenborough, as dinosaurs come up to you. VR 360 degree videos are of use when you want to show motion or real people doing things in a space. They are cheap and relatively easy to shoot.

3. Immersive graphic
worlds

Sometimes, rather than simply point a camera and shoot a
still or moving image, you have to create a world with graphics. This frees you
to create anything your imagination comes up with. It may at the tiny, even
molecular level, an ideal hospital ward, or an impossible environment, such as
the deep ocean or out in space, in a war zone, inside a nuclear reactor, out in
the solar system, on Mars being near a black hole.

The advantage of created graphic environments is the ability
to allow navigation, as well as the creation of other graphic entities within
that world, objects, avatars and so on. It is a manipulable world of bits. You
will need to build your world using a 3D graphics package, like 3D studio, then
use a tool such as Unity, Unreal or Stingray to build your experience into a
functional 3D learning experience, deliverable on specified devices. So you've created a world but where do you go from here? Interactivity. This is where things get trickier.

4, Navigate through
worlds

If you want to string still or video environments together to give the user choices on where to go, either
by cuts, fade down/fade back up, as used in video or, if in a graphically
created world, moving through the environment. This can be done by simply
looking at options and pressing a directional pad on the headset (Samsung Gear)
or with a controller (Oculus comes with a Microsoft Xbox controller). This
greatly expands your possibilities in learning. You give the learner choices
and can create levels, progress, games. Navigation is possible but involves programing and hte creation of instructions and a usable user interface. It can be done but needs professional design and coding.

5. Hotspots

Hotspots for pop-up explanations, explanatory videos appearing, graphics or audio is pretty straight forward, as you;re mapping hotspots to the sphere or world you've created in VR. You need to identify hotspots as hotspots. never confuse the learner with hotspots that look as though they're interactive but they are not. One can imagine learning scenarios that get the learner to actually click on things they need to find and identify. One can embed PowerPoint, videos, animations, whatever.

6. Manipulate objects

The next level is to allow learners to manipulate objects.
This can be useful in doing experiments, building things, maintenance tasks and
so on. I’ve put together pipes and components inside a nuclear reactor, lifted and used safety equipment on an oil rig, grabbed a clip floating around in space to clip
myself to the Space Station, before floating around on the outside, used hand controllers to shoot things in games and pull over protection shields. This is all possible with hand controllers, which
have buttons and triggers for grabbing, releasing, shooting etc. This is tricky
with mobile VR as they tend not to have hand controllers, all manipulation
having to take place through the touchpad on your headset. But Oculus and Vive
have separate controllers which allow both hands to do things in 3D spaces, as
well as grab and so on. Haptic feel is also coming.

7. Avatar interaction

Avatars (human-like characters) can be created and programmed to move within 3D
created VR worlds. This allows learning interaction with pre-programmed avatars. Doctors
with patients, sales people with potential customers, managers with employees
and so on. This is fine for pre-set encounters and directed training, useful in
sales, management and soft skills. You have to cope with interaction, either
through preselected text options (your questions, requests etc) and their
replies. Beyond this lies speech, spoken by you the learner and the avatars you
interact with. One interesting aspect of experiential learning is tutor directions and interventions. This can be fed live into your ears by audio or the tutor can be an avatar within the created world. I’ve seen this work well in technical training on oil rigs. There is also the future possibility of tutor support through chatbots. I've been experimenting with these AI-driven chatbots and they can be trained to respond to questions, requests for action etc.

8. Multiplayer
interaction

Take all of the above and more, in worlds that are real, created, built and where you can meet, communicate and interact with your friends,
business colleagues, customers, teachers whoever. It is no accident that
Facebook bough Oculus Rift for an eye watering figure of $2.3 billion. They
know that this is where social media is going. The real world is 3D, social
media is currently 2D. Fully populated worlds, you can enter, play in and do things
beyond our current imagination are coming. It’s frighteningly exciting. This
may sound outlandish and way down the line but complete learning environments like this are already on with VR, multiplayer and tutor intervention.

9. Create things

In the outer limits of VR, you can already create your own
3D paintings and sculptures and walk through them. I like these applications. You
can choose your brush, create images in a 3D space, stand back look at it, walk
through it, stand inside it. This open world, where you create what you want, has an
allure that has attracted millions of young people in Minecraft, who do this as
a matter of routine. When they can climb inside these worlds a new level of
creative effort will have been realised.

10. Hybrid
real/virtual VR

You can go on rollercoasters where you wear VR but experience
all the thrills of a real rollercoaster with extreme G-forces. What you see
through VR is a rollercoaster in a created graphics world, in space, wherever. The VR experience is synched with the actual ride. You can
even choose which virtual world to experience and now interact in space
battles, at, for example Six Flags theme park. They use Samsung Gear headsets
and can enhance the experience even on the oldest of rollercoasters.

VIDEO

I’ve sat in chairs that vibrate as I unlocked the air lock
on the International Space Station and used my hands to grip onto handles to
pull myself out. If you want to explore, walk, even run, through 3D worlds, a
rig in which you stand and walk without moving can also be purchased. The VIVE
headset allows you to walk about within a pre-defined cube, made visible from
within. External cameras have been added to some headsets. In the porn industry
all sorts of ‘objects’ can be used in the simulated of 3D sex (teledildonics). The line between
the real and virtual is indeed blurring. It’s AR (Augmented Reality) meets VR
(Virtual Reality) meets RR (real reality).

Being practical…

Couple of things to remember with VR. By all means play
around with the medium but it needs careful thought and planning. Know what you
want to do, choose the right level and understand the limits of the tools you use to capture and create experiences, as well as the tools used to
create navigation, interaction and manipulation within those worlds. You have
to understand where to place cameras (sitting or standing) and be careful with
lighting. Audio is also important. Understand also, the resolution of the final
output. It may say HD but the resolution on video will be far worse than that
on stills from the same camera. The cost of coding a VR experience is
open-ended. Then there’s your target devices – mobiles (selected), Oculus,
Vive…. All of these? Remember that these are not easy to deliver via an LMS and
SCORM is tricky.

Conclusion

The first three options (1,2,3)allow you to simply create
learning ‘experiences’ that are linear and directed. They are cheap to produce,
unless you want exotic locations. The next three (4,5,6) allow the learner more
freedom with fuller forms of interaction, other than simply looking around. From 7 onwards, things get complex and expensive. If you're interested in doing a project contact me.

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

7 FAILS in the way we practice 'failure' in learning

Failure, as we know, is a fundamental part of learning which
I have explored elsewhere. Yet failure, in practice, is often used in learning to hinder rather than help learning. It too often becomes defined in practice
as a deficit technique, rather than a formative feature of progress.
Here’s seven examples of how failure can fail learners.

1. Language of
failure

Far too much emphasis is put on final, summative assessment,
at the expense of formative assessment, confusing and importing summative
habits into formative processes. The summative language of ‘pass’ and ‘fail’ is
a mutually exclusive opposition that makes little sense in formative
assessment. We take a dualist attitude and transfer it, mistakenly, back across
to the entire process of learning. Too many teachers and online learning
programmes default to the language of failure, rather than the language of
learning. The fact that you have yet to know or master something is a state of
‘not yet knowing’ not failure. Yet the red pen culture and lack of knowledge
about feedback, deliberate practice, memory and the role of failure in all learning
is endemic.

2. Language of gifted
and talented

My heart sinks when I hear parents use these terms about
their kids. Even worse, are schools and teachers, who should know better, using
a whole raft of terms associated with these fixed ability terms. Attributing
success to ‘talent’, ‘ability’ and being ‘gifted’ is disturbing from a head
teacher or teacher. You don’t have to be a Dweck freak to realise how
destructive this language is in learning. It fixes attributes and therefore
demotes effort and practice. It also gives learners a get out clause. Even the
learners who succeed with high marks stop at the pass mark and ignore
the remainder. The rest, if they are branded as failures (not talented or gifted) will make less effort and many will drop out

3. Hands-up anyone

A good example of awful teaching practice is the ‘hand up anyone’ technique,
beautifully exposed in Ferris Beuller “….anyone, anyone.”. The teacher asks a
question. This is good as it forces the learners to try to recall the answer
but only the ones who know the answer put their hands up and the rest feel
deflated. The introverts are excluded, tehre's not enough time for true reflection. It makes no sense. The process of learning needs to be kept positive
at this level, not some lazy ritual where people are embarrassed, even
castigated for not yet knowing.

4. Whole task
assessment

Rather than create, active, effortful learning experiences, where failure is part of the learning process, we set whole tasks and simply
repeat those tasks. You don’t learn to write by simply writing, you learn
hundreds, indeed thousands of small rules around spelling, sentence structures,
punctuation, style and so on. It’s lots of tiny acts of failure and correction
that lead to success. The ‘whole language’ movement, for example, led to
decades of bad teaching and poor literacy, as it failed to recognise the role
of failure in the learning process. Whole task teaching and assessment is the route to self-doubt and failure.

5. Essays

The ‘essay’ is a lazy and vastly overused form of
assessment. A Professor of Pharmacology once complained to me that her
University forced her to set essays for her Pharmacology students, which she
found ridiculous. Smart students simply memorise essays for exams, so they are
far from being an adequate form of summative assessment. Hand written essays
encourage this as it is difficult to engage in critical writing, which always
involves redrafting, structural change and rewriting. Waiting for weeks (the
norm) to get a grade back (with scant feedback) on an essay, is a ridiculous
form of formative assessment. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve come
across parents writing essays for their kids at school and, unbelievably,
University. Then there’s the simple fact that you can buy them. Encouragecheating and you’ll get cheats.

6. Marking as
end-point

Unnecessary marking is another technique that confuses
summative with formative assessment. Professor Black rightly criticises
teachers for being over-zealous with marking, when they should be promoting
learning. His advice is to drop marking during the formative learning as it
does more harm than good. Let’s say a few get a pass by crossing some
threshold, let’s say x%. Even with these learners this will act as an end
point, leaving 100-x% of the knowledge or skills absent. That’s not good in
healthcare, where that 100-x% can kill. It also demotivates those who ‘fail’,
so that more damage is done to the whole cohort. For a more detailed account of why marking sucks, see here.

7. Deficit model

The education system is too often seen in terms of a deficit
model, a dangerous conceit. Structurally it is layered like rock and the learner has to punch up
through these layers while many fail to punch through at each stage. This
deficit model, where the system is always failing, with failed schools and
failed standards, pushes politicians and professionals towards a deficit model
that defines the domain, policy and practice. The glass is always half empty as
the language of failure is allowed to dominate. League tables, winners and
losers , do little other than promote a culture of failure.

Conclusion

Failure is the end point for too many in this process. To
promote and see ‘failure’, not as a means to an end (learning) but an end in
itself, is to misunderstand its fundamental role in learning and memory. Sifting,
sorting and ultimately abandonment, is to fail to understand the true joy of
education and learning. For too many the end point is being branded as a
failures. Turn this on its head and see failure as a state of becoming and you
turn a fixed entity into a dynamic process and opportunity.